ABSTRACT
Mr George Gissing, in Eve's Ransom, writes of sad things without being pathetic, of mean circumstances without being sordid. Down in the Black Country, whose lurid nights and smoky days and barren wastes Mr Gissing knows so well, there lives a young man, Hilliard by name, fettered by poverty to an occupation he does not like, and by generosity to his poor and unsupported sister-in-law. A stroke of luck sets him free for a time, and he goes to London to 'live'-and to meet Eve Madeley, who alters his whole existence. Earlier in the book Hilliard rather loudly proclaims that he shall never love or marry. We are notified of no change in his sentiments until he suddenly surprises you by making violent love to Eve. The story is curiously rather the history of events and utterances than a record of feelings as they lead up to acts. Eve herself is absolutely objective. You see her through the eyes of the other persons: hardly at all do you look at the world or at
~erselfthrough her own eyes. She is at once impalpable and life-like. Her actions are quite consistent with what you gather ofher character, but the fascination she has for Hilliard rarely extends to you who know her so little. The book is extremely interesting, as being a love-story in the subdued tones oflower middle-class life, without any ofthe misleading glamour ofromance, and as, in its own way, achieving realism without nastiness.
